Announcing the 2016 Flash Grant Winners

Congratulations to thePhotoWings Flash Grant 2016 winners:

Carolyn Meyer

"Bursting the Bubble: Fostering Connections between Community and Campus"

and

Peter Pin

"Migrations of Memory"

PhotoWings is extremely pleased to announce the winners of our PhotoWings Flash Grant 2016. We are impressed with the quality and broad potential of their projects, along with their commitment to utilize the power of photography. This year’s Flash Grant Award winners will work with us to create toolkits and curricula related to their projects that will be shared on our website. These will expand on their potential to impact many people and create ripples. We hope that these projects will not only make their mark, but that they will evolve in ways that will allow them to be replicated, adapted or serve as inspiration for new projects.

We would also like to thank everyone who submitted entries for this year’s grant; it was difficult to make a decision. The selection committee felt privileged to read everyone’s stories and proposals, and were heartened and inspired to see the creative and thoughtful ways that photography is being utilized across disciplines, cultures and generations to further deep thinking and communication. We honor all the entrants for this grant: committed photographers and educators who are all doing meaningful work, often under difficult circumstances.

Sincerely,

Suzie Katz

Founder and President

Carolyn Meyer"Bursting the Bubble: Fostering Connections between Community and Campus"

Carolyn Meyer is Director of Professional Immersive Learning and Special Programs in the Graduate School of International Policy and Management at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA. As at other schools, students at Middlebury live in an "academic bubble" that fails to foster an understanding or appreciation for the "local" and the value of civic engagement. Conversely, local communities typecast university students and lack awareness of the mission and focus of the school. Her project will bring together diverse stakeholders, including affluent Monterey Peninsula residents and farming communities in the Salinas Valley, using photography as a tool to learn more about each other and go beyond stereotypes. The project will foster relationships between students and the local community and the value of civic engagement.

Inspired byRollins College “The Sanford Project”, a PhotoWings/AshokaU grant winner, the Flash grant will support portrait sessions, facilitated discussions, an exhibit of the portraits and stories of 12 community members and 12 students, and a project video. We will work with the recipient to create a project tool kit curriculum for application, adaptation or inspiration.

Peter Pin"Migrations of Memory"

Peter is the son of the Killing Fields. He was born in a refugee camp that his family fled to after the Cambodian genocide and has struggled most of his life to understand the legacy of his people. Since 2014, he has conducted photo-based intergenerational memory workshops across the United States in collaboration with community partners such as the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia and the National Cambodian American Heritage and Killing Fields Memorial in Chicago. Through a series of three workshops sessions and a community installation, participants search for and photograph family ephemera connected to diaspora in their own families, interview family members about their family stories, produce written reflections about what they have learned, and contribute to a performative, generative community installation that maps diaspora and memory about the Cambodian American community.

We will work with the grant recipient to expand this photo-based intergenerational memory project to workshops and installations in Long Beach CA and Lowell, MA workshops and installations in Long Beach, CA, Philadelphia, PA and Lowell, MA and to create a project tool kit and curriculum for application, adaptation or inspiration.

Flash Grant Outline:

Overview:

Our photographic world is so dynamic and is changing almost by the minute. In a world where everyone’s a photographer and photography is so ubiquitous, the potential for utilizing photography in innovative ways is daunting, exciting and unlimited.

At PhotoWings, we work hard to explore creative and thoughtful ways to utilize photography across disciplines, cultures and generations to further deep thinking and communication. Photographs can help build 21st century skills and encourage social emotional learning (SEL).

We’ve had extraordinary success finding like-minded partners to help further our mission and would now like to engage the Ashoka, SPE, and other educator communities for your ideas. We are purposely making our Flash Grants “up to” $1000 and “up to” $5000 each based on the (depth-reach-complexity-budget) of the applications we receive. We’d like to receive your input on any scale—from a one-off idea to a full-blown project. PhotoWings has supported the creation of toolkits or curricula related to important photography projects that have demonstrated the potential to impact many people and create ripples. The idea is to not only make an impact, but to create something that can be replicated, adapted or serve as inspiration for a new project.

Our first set of Flash Grants will be given to projects that creatively utilize the content on our website. The submission can be as small as a single idea about how to use a portion of one of our interviews for a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural or intergenerational assignment or it could be a bigger project idea you plan to implement. There may be multiple levels of winners, depending on what we receive. We would love to amass a wide array of ideas that we can feature on our website so others may benefit. Winners will receive funding on a sliding scale depending on whether it’s a simple idea or a larger project idea for in or outside of the classroom and whether the applicant will implement and document the project. Grant funding is designed to support the creation of toolkits and/or curriculum so that these ideas can be shared for educational purposes.

The second set of Flash Grants will be given for projects that replicate, adapt or draw inspiration from our current PhotoWings Outreach projects, with extra attention being given to new project concepts and projects addressing visual literacy. Applications for these grants will require a detailed description and budget. Grants will be awarded on a sliding scale appropriate to the project. Please refer to our AshokaU InSights grant winners on our website for guidance.

Photography-based Media including Still Photographs: Use photography-based media that incorporates still photographs (existing photographs or ones to be made) in the project or event to communicate an important message, story, or idea (not just fine art). This includes, but is not limited to, a photography display, a website, an exhibit, multi-media, videos, performance (musical or dance), projections, print displays, and/or a photo collage presentation.

Permissions: You give PhotoWings permission to use your project and materials for educational purposes, including sharing projects through social media. To do so you must own your project photos or obtain the written permission of the owner to use photographs that do not belong to you. We encourage you to be original in creating your project.

F.A.Q.

How much funding can I apply for, and how does the funding need to be used?

PhotoWings will offer applicants the opportunity to receive grants (up to $5,000 for exceptional projects). If multiple strong applications are received then more than one grant may be offered. Grants will not be given to support personal projects.

Funding can be used to purchase materials necessary for the success of the PhotoWings Flash Grant project, such as supplies, room rentals, technology needs, live-streaming equipment, printing, photo booth construction and display costs. Note: Funding cannot be used for travel expenses, equipment purchases, (small exceptions may be may be considered on a case-by case basis for the purchase of throw away cameras, etc), exhibit frames/shipping or alcohol.

The selection committee values evidence of creative efforts to leverage existing or in-kind resources as appropriate.

As part of your application, you will also be asked to submit a budget on intended use of the grant funds.

In determining grant amounts, extra weight will be given to applications that include at least one of the following:

• depth

• reach

• complexity

• budget

A mid-term and final report will be due at the end of the grant period for projects in the second grant category, as well as receipts confirming how the funds have been spent.

The amount of funding allocated will be based on the proposed budget and alignment with the grant criteria. A selection committee will review completed applications and may ask for clarifications from the applicant before finalizing the agreement and dispersing the funds.

How should I envision the scope of my project? For how many people? For how long?

The size of the event or project, how long it lasts, and how many people participate is up to the applicant.

For any additional information please contact us

info@photowings.org

Previous PhotoWings Grant:

Following our Self-Discovery Through Photography webinar, the partnership of PhotoWings and Ashoka U announced InSights: Past, Present, and Future Self through Photography grants in September 2013. Working with nine prominent, grant-winning university communities from the 24 world-wide Ashoka U Campuses — including Brown, Cornell, New School, Ryerson, and Tulane — we helped foster and mentor campus projects that utilize the power of photography. The goal of InSights is to demonstrate ways that photography and the ideas around it could act as conversation starters in cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-generational contexts, engaging communities and catalyzing social change.

Ashoka is the original network of social entrepreneurs worldwide, with nearly 3,000 Ashoka Fellows in 70 countries putting their system changing ideas into practice on a global scale. As founder Bill Drayton says, "Our job is not to give people fish, it's not to teach them how to fish, it's to build new and better fishing industries."